Except may be backing of a bigshot like Microsoft, there is nothing in Nokia Lumia 800 that can make it compete with other smartphones from Samsung or HTC. Launching handsets in the league of Apple iPhone is still a miles away dream for Nokia

Before I start, let me confess that this review is completely based on technical specifications and not a hands-on experience. Although, Nokia is not leaving a single stone unturned through publicity events in order to grab attention towards its’re-entry' into the smartphone category, it is the technical specifications that makes the Lumia 800 an 'also ran' in the race.

In addition, the price factor is a big disadvantage for Nokia Lumia 800, especially in a country obsessed with low or ‘value-for-money’ mobile handsets. While the value-for-money tag has worked for Nokia in the past, the lack of this feature would only shrink its market share from 30% at present.

Purely looking at the technical specifications, I found there is one handset, Samsung Galaxy S Plus that competes with Nokia Lumia 800. Both have 1.4GHZ Scorpion processor with Qualcomm MSM8255 Snapdragon chipset and Adreno 205 as graphics processing unit (GPU).
Screen: While Lumia 800 has 3.7 inches AMOLED capacitive touchscreen, the S Plus comes with 4 inches Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen. Both have 480x800 pixel resolution and are protected by Corning Gorilla Glass. (Compared with the first-generation active-matrix organic light-emitting diode or AMOLED, some of the Super AMOLED advantages are brighter screens, less sunlight reflection and reduced power consumption).

Storage: Both handsets have 16GB internal memory and 512MB random access memory (RAM). However, S Plus comes with 2GB read-only memory (ROM) and a memory card slot for up to 32GB. ROM is mainly used to distribute firmware or software that is very closely tied to specific hardware, and unlikely to need frequent updates.

Data Connectivity: Both Lumia 800 and S Plus supports GPRS and EDGE network and offers speed up to 14.4 Mbps on HSDPA (3G). Both support Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n protocol, with S Plus also offering digital living network alliance (DLNA) and Wi-Fi hotspot features. (DLNA certified device makes it easier for consumers to use, share and enjoy digital photos, music and videos across similar devices).

Camera: While Lumia 800 has an 8 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics and dual-LED flash, the S Plus comes with just 5 megapixel camera and no flash. Both can record HD quality (720p@30fps) videos. The Lumia 800 does not have a secondary camera like S Plus, which comes handy for video calls.

OS: Although, after its alliance with software giant Microsoft, the Finnish mobile maker was expected to come out with handset based on Windows. The Lumia 800 comes with Windows Phone 7.5, also known as Mango and offers one-touch social network access, easy grouping of contacts, integrated communication threads and Internet Explorer 9. On the other hand, Galaxy S plus comes with Google Android 2.3 or Gingerbread and loads of applications that can be downloaded either free or paid for from the internet. (Android is a mobile operating system developed by Google and Open Handset Alliance and according to a report by NPD, enjoys 53% market share compared with mere 2% share for Windows Phone 7 in the US).

Multimedia: When it comes to enjoying music or videos on the handset, Samsung clearly leads the way. While both handsets supports, MP4, H.263, H.264 and WMV files, the S Plus also supports DivX and Xvid. In addition S plus also support TV-out feature that is not there in Lumia 800.

Documents/Editor: Both handsets have document as well as video and image viewer and editor.

Battery: This is really interesting. While Lumia 800 comes with a 1450mAh Li-Ion battery, the S Plus comes with 1650 mAh Li-Ion one. However, there is big difference between the talk time and standby time of both the handsets. On a 3G network, Lumia 800 claims to offer stand-by time of 335 hours and talk time of up to 9 hours and 30 minutes, the S Plus claims a stand-by time of up to 625 hours and talk time of up to 6 hours and 30 minutes. The fast draining of battery, in case of S Plus can be attributed to its operating system. Android phones use more battery due to their constant need to communicate over the internet; especially applications like Google Maps and Latitude are known to drain the battery fast.

Price: Nokia Lumia 800 comes with an official price tag of Rs29,999 and can be bought for less than it. Samsung Galaxy S Plus sells at around Rs23,500.

Conclusion: Although Nokia sees its Lumia 800 to be a competitor to Apple iPhone, it is nowhere near the niche product. In fact compared with iPhone, the Lumia 800 can be termed as 'noPhone'. Even compared with Samsung products, Nokia is trying to sell this handset with specifications similar to S Plus but charging a premium. Four factors work in favour of Samsung Galaxy Plus, one, its screen is Super AMOLED, two the screen size is 4 inches and third and biggest is it runs on Android and fourth it is available at around Rs23,500. By the way, if interested one can grab the elder sibling, the Galaxy S II for a lesser price than the Nokia Lumia 800.

The new features make Mango much more appealing than the earlier versions of the Windows Phone software.

But many of the new features simply match features or apps long available for Android or iOS devices. And in some important ways, Windows Phone still comes up short compared to those operating systems.

There are far fewer applications available for Windows Phone devices than for Android or iOS. And it's not just the obscure apps that are missing; among the popular apps you just can't get on Windows Phone devices are Internet radio service Pandora, digital video service Hulu and even Skype.

And while you can update iOS or Android devices directly over the Internet, you still have to plug Windows Phone 7 devices into a computer to update them. Similarly, both iOS and Android devices now allow you to stream and download all of your own music from an Internet-based storage locker. Windows Phone 7 will connect with Microsoft's Zune subscription service, but it doesn't have anything comparable to Apple's iCloud or Google Music lockers.

Additionally, Windows Phone's built-in Web browser, Internet Explorer, doesn't support new Web standards to the degree the Android and iOS browsers do, doesn't support Adobe's Flash technology and doesn't have enough users to persuade Web publishers to customize pages for it. The end result is that you can't run some Web applications, such as the one for Google Music, that will run on iOS and Android devices. And sometimes, slide shows and other multimedia content that you could see on those devices will return error messages in Internet Explorer.

So, while I've found a lot to like about Mango, I can't recommend buying a Windows Phone device over the iPhone or an Android gadget.